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As we noted last week, the US Supreme Court recently upheld Indiana’s strict voter ID law, raising concerns about the disfranchisement of out-of-state college students. Reports from yesterday’s primary voting suggest that those concerns were at least partially warranted.
College students often vote in their college communities but maintain driver’s licenses from their states of origin. Under Indiana law, out-of-state licenses are not valid ID for voting.
Public university students with out-of-state licenses were able to vote without incident yesterday, as their college ID cards are regarded as “state-issued” identification for the purposes of the law. Student PIRG poll-watchers did, however, report a number of incidents in which private-college students were turned away. One PIRG representative further noted that news of the stringent ID requirements likely kept some students away from the polls altogether.
Twenty international students at the University of Sussex in England have been banned from taking final exams because they have fallen behind in their tuition payments.
More than 150 Sussex students staged a protest against the decision late last week. The president of the university’s student union described the proposed payment schedules and the timing of the university’s action as unreasonable.
The protest follows a successful Facebook campaign on behalf of one of the students, Luqman Onikosi of Nigeria. When Onikosi’s sponsor in England died, he was unable to raise the money to pay the fees himself.
The university recently agreed to allow Onikosi to take his exams and put off payment until September.
Update: A follow-up protest is planned for this Friday, May 9.
A major police operation on the San Diego State University campus led to the arrest of 75 students on drug charges yesterday. Fifty pounds of marijuana and four pounds of cocaine were seized in the sting, which involved seven SDSU fraternities.
The arrests were the culmination of six months of undercover work in SDSU’s frats, initiated after a 19-year-old student died of a cocaine and alcohol overdose last year. All of those arrested were men, and approximately twenty were charged with drug sales rather than possession.
On Tuesday SDSU suspended six fraternities — Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Theta, Theta Chi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Mu — that were implicated in the case. All of the arrested students have been suspended, and those who lived in campus housing are being evicted.
I’m currently reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, on organizing in the age of the internet. He doesn’t have a huge amount to say about campus activism specifically, but a lot of his general insights are relevant to the student experience, and his understanding of organizing connects up with mine in interesting ways. Once I’m done, I’ll likely post a review, or at least some thoughts.
For now, here’s a quote:
The power to coordinate otherwise dispersed groups will continue to improve; new social tools are still being invented, and however minor they may seem, any tool that improves shared awareness or group coordination can be pressed into service for political means, because the freedom to act in a group is inherently political. … We adopt those tools that amplify our capabilities, and we modify our tools to improve that amplification.
Speaking of social tools, have I mentioned that this blog has a Facebook group? Not quite sure what we’re going to use it for yet, but you’re welcome to join if you’re interested in finding out, or in helping us decide.
Richard Peltz, a professor at the University of Arkansas Bowen School of Law, has filed a lawsuit against two students who called him a racist.
The lawsuit names Valerie Nation and Chrishuana Clark, both third-year law students who have been involved with the school’s Black Law Students Association, along with Eric Spencer Buchanan, president of the W. Harold Flowers Law Society. The organizations are also named in the suit.
In the fall of 2005, Peltz gave a lecture in his constitutional law class that March 2007 letter circulated by the Black Law Students Association later described as a “hateful and inciting speech … used to attack and demean the black students in his class.” In light of this and other incidents, the BLSA asked that Peltz be reprimanded by the law school, barred from teaching required courses “where Black students would be required to have him as a professor,” and made to attend diversity training.
In his lawsuit, Peltz contends that these and other “false accusations of racism damaged plaintiff’s reputation, character and integrity in the Arkansas legal community.”
Last Thursday an attorney for Clark filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, contending that “an accusation by a plaintiff that a defendant has called him a racist, in the context of public discourse at a law school,” will not “support a claim for defamation.” The motion contends that Peltz “has embarked on a personal vendetta against two black law students and two predominantly black organizations based on what he perceives as their opposition to him or to his political views and legal theories.”
studentactivism.net 
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